Scruples Two

by Judith Krantz

  Susan Arvey crossed it hastily, going straight to the large dressing room, where she took off all her dull clothes. She made a careful choice of one of the dozen floor-length robes that hung there, picking one that shimmered in violet tones. Each of the robes had a wide sash at the waist, a deep neckline and a full skirt. They were made of precious but light fabrics, airy enough to be almost transparent, but used so lavishly that their folds concealed any clear look at her body. Susan opened a cabinet in the dressing room and inspected five long red and brunette wigs on stands, finally choosing one that was an exceptionally long tangle of black curls. She undid her chignon, pinning her hair on top of her head, and fastening the wig securely. Suddenly Susan Arvey looked not thirty-four, but twenty-four, for the sweep of hair took away a full decade. Her makeup needed no attention; its very simplicity added to her look of youth.

  For the second time that evening she stood in front of a well-lit full-length mirror and took inventory. Try to critique as she would, there was only a girl standing there, an exceptionally good-looking girl with a marvelously appealing body, of which the worst you could say was that her breasts were perhaps too large, her nipples too prominent, for every taste. No one she had ever known in the world would recognize her; the dark wig made an amazing difference in her looks, falling forward in curly bangs and shadowing her cheekbones. She took her bare breasts in her hands and pushed them forward so that the neckline of the robe framed them in their lush, white nakedness. She arranged several of the curls of the wig so that they fell over her breasts, and parted the robe at the waist so that her blond pubic hair was visible. She stood, swaying slightly, admiring her erotic image for long minutes, feeling a warmth rising in her body, a puissant liquid feeling shot through with flashes of desire. Finally, almost reluctantly, she rearranged her robe and went into the bedroom, moving around deftly, making sure that the right dim lamps were lit and that the pillows on the bed were properly arranged.

  The doorbell rang almost as soon as she was finished with her preparations. Trembling slightly, she went to answer it. Part of the excitement of these evenings was that she never booked the same man twice. It ensured that he would never become too curious or possessive about her, and it preserved the charm of her surprise. All the men who worked for the agency were gifted, the very drunk actress who had first told her about it had confided.

  “They don’t send ugly men, but their looks are not the point, see, the point is that they can get it up and keep it up, they can perform, see, if you know what I mean, and believe you me, we’re talking about a very very special talent, worth its weight in gold. They’re all young or they couldn’t do it, they can’t fake it like the girls, that’s why they charge such a fortune. They’re squeaky clean and they’re not ever going to turn mean and they cost like bloody hell, but let’s face it, sometimes it’s worth it, know what I mean?”

  Susan had pretended not to know what she meant, but she’d kept the agency’s card that the actress had pressed on her. The actress, who’d blacked out on what she’d told Susan Arvey, never had to worry about losing Susan’s friendship, for Susan couldn’t be certain how much the woman had retained of a conversation they never had again.

  She opened the door, keeping it on the chain. Several times she hadn’t cared for the look of the man the agency sent, and she had asked him to leave, phoning immediately for a replacement. Tonight she was pleased. As she let the man in, she sized him up. He had a perceptibly awkward look on his pleasant, scrubbed, open face. He obviously was new at this, Susan thought, appraising his height, which was barely more than her own, his healthy tan, his short, light brown, curly hair, his broad shoulders, his noticeable sturdiness. He wore the preppy clothes they all wore, his oxford shirt open at the neck, his sports jacket hanging over his arm. They never dressed more formally; the agency was not an escort service.

  As she closed the front door behind her and locked it, she said, “You are here to do only what I tell you to do. I don’t permit questions, you may not ask me anything at all, you must stay silent under all circumstances. You must please me, you must obey me implicitly.” Although she spoke in a low, level voice, no one listening to her would doubt her entire seriousness.

  She led the way across the living room into the bedroom, noting that the boy’s bewilderment was only intensified by his finding her so unexpectedly young and beautiful. Once they had reached the insinuating deep pink cave of the bedroom, Susan took his jacket and threw it on a chair. “Take off all your clothes,” she commanded, and sat down in an armchair near the door, watching him while he obeyed her, almost stumbling as he shook his feet out of his trousers and flung them on the carpet. “Now stand with your back to the door, and look straight ahead, don’t look at me,” she dictated. Ignoring his surprised face, she thoughtfully studied the young man’s tanned, naked body. The hair of his chest and thighs was fairly abundant and the same light brown as the hair on his head. He was powerfully built, all of his muscles were unusually well developed, and his penis, dangling heavily between his legs, was considerably shorter than average but twice as thick.

  As she sat impassively, betraying nothing but a steady, calm interest, Susan could feel her rising excitement at the sight of this wholly desirable boy. It was necessary that he be a stranger, necessary that he be prohibited from expressing his own personality, necessary that he be immobile, totally subject to her scrutiny, unable to act unless she allowed it. His very youth and evident inexperience made her feel a flare of inventive mischief. She gave him an order she had never given before.

  “I want you to turn around and face the door, stand flat up against it and keep your feet together,” Susan directed him when she had looked her fill. His back was strong, his buttocks shapely, firm and round, the only part of his body besides his penis that wasn’t completely tan. She got up and stood behind him, not letting her robe touch him, and ran a finger lightly down his backbone to the base of his spine, pleased by the strong reflexive shiver he couldn’t control. Without touching him anywhere else she began to finger his buttocks, teasing them with casual, caressing, roving fingertips. As her hands played with him she dictated her injunctions. “Stand absolutely still,” she enjoined him, “don’t move an inch away from the door. You think you know what I want, but you haven’t any idea. You think you can give it to me, but I’m going to take it from you. Take it, do you understand?” She put both of her hands over the solid curves of his bottom, rotating them so that they created a warmly intimate friction.

  “Don’t!” she ruled cruelly as she felt him starting to press back against her. “Don’t you dare! Hold still, part your feet, but stay pressed flat against the door.” When he had complied, she worked her hand slowly, so slowly that he couldn’t restrain a moan, into the warm place between his thighs and made herself master of his balls. For minutes, while he stood shuddering with the effort not to move, she grasped them, weighing them in her fingers, pleased with their ponderous heaviness, exploring the thickness of the coarse hair at the root of his hugely swollen, short penis that was crushed against the door.

  “Touch it,” he groaned.

  Susan smiled briefly, but when she spoke he heard only anger. “I told you not to ask. You have no rights. Now I’ll never touch it, never, you’ve just guaranteed your punishment, you’ve disobeyed me.” She licked all her fingers and returned to his balls, moistening them and squeezing them with the most luxuriously subtle pressure, listening to his heightened breathing as she toyed ever more amusingly with him, relishing the increasing difficulty he was having in preventing himself from making any noise. “Don’t you have any self-control?” she asked in contempt. “Turn around and face me. Oh, really, you should be ashamed of yourself. Look at you, you’re no better than an animal. You’ve disregarded every word I said. Go over to the bed, lie down on your back, and get ready for your punishment. I warned you once … that should have been enough.”

  He moved stiffly toward the bed and lay down, keeping himself ri
gorously still, his arms at his sides, although he was panting for breath. Susan bent over him, opening her robe and freeing her hanging breasts. He bit his lips at the sight of them, but prevented himself from moving. When she saw that he was managing to obey her, she parted her robe until it was open all the way to her waist, allowing him to see what lay between her legs, swaying her hips from side to side until her provocation suddenly made him lift himself a few inches off the bed. Susan looked at his flushed face in disdain and spoke to him in a low, scornful voice. “I was going to give you one last chance,” she said, closing her robe, “but now you’ve thrown it away. I was going to do … oh, such good, good things to you … but … no … it’s over … you’ll never get another opportunity … do you have the slightest idea what you missed by your disobedience? Now! Put your arms over your head, spread your legs again, and lie still.”

  There was a flicker of fear in his eyes as he watched her take out the long chiffon scarves that she kept ready in the bedside table. “Don’t worry,” she said briefly, “I don’t believe in causing pain.” Deftly she fastened his wrists and ankles to the graceful curves of the iron headboard and footboard, knowing that the scarves, for all their softness, were exceedingly strong. She arranged the last scarf so that it lightly covered his eyes, enabling him to see her through a layer of chiffon, but not to see clearly. Susan Arvey stepped back, looking at her captive with gourmandise. His penis was a burly, twitching, aching thing that he could not reach under any circumstances, that he could not touch for relief. He was entirely at her mercy, aroused to a point that an average man would be incapable of sustaining for long, but the agency did not send average men, and she knew she could do whatever she wished to the boy, as slowly as she pleased.

  She let her robe fall softly to the floor and then she took all of the pile of pillows that separated the crown of the boy’s head from the headboard of the bed, threw them to the carpet and made a fairly wide place for herself on the mattress behind his short curls. She perched lightly there, kneeling, watching his eyes as he tried to look backwards at her nakedness. Oh, but he wanted her, she thought, he wanted her so badly. Restraining him was necessary for what she intended to do to him. Even the best trained of the agency men couldn’t be entirely trusted to acquiesce in the punishment she had formulated for him. Slowly, from her kneeling position, she curved forward over him until the big tips of her dark nipples swayed over his open mouth, just too high for him to reach them. His tongue flickered imploringly in the air as he watched them through the scarf. Now and then she allowed him to capture a nipple and suck on it for a while until she pulled back, ignoring his protestations, humiliating him until he begged, for now that he had lost all hope of pleasing her by docility or obedience, he implored her shamelessly. Susan played this game with him as her nipples hardened into tight points, and slowly she allowed him to take more and more of each breast into his mouth, relishing the excruciating good steady suction. Only when she chose not to continue to hold back did she lean far forward over him, resting on her elbows and her knees, her legs spread open wide above his head.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, knowing that he was watching helplessly, now speechless with lust, she lowered herself toward his mouth. She sensed, rather than saw, his fleshy tongue straining up toward her. His tongue was blunt and wet and desperately eager and eventually, after much hesitation, she finally allowed him to use it between her open thighs, to use it on the soft, fragrant, partially opened lips of her lower body. She let him plunge his tongue between those lips, parting the hair, stabbing at the slickness and the wetness there, his chin raised as high off the bed as possible. She let him attempt to weaken her with his clever tricks, she felt her own congestion grow heavy while she kept her eyes on the clublike penis he was utterly unable to use. As soon as she could drag herself away from this luscious importuning, she lifted herself up again effortlessly and sank backwards on her heels so that he couldn’t reach her or even see her.

  “Oh no! Please!” he begged and she laughed and let him suck madly only on her flickering fingertips. Soon she bent her body down over his mouth again, this time low enough so that he was able to capture her clitoris and work on it with his tongue and his lips and the insides of his cheeks while she circled her bottom slowly, knowingly, pushing it hard into him for an instant before she lifted up just out of reach. Again and again she raised herself completely off his mouth and listened with voluptuousness at his supplications to let him put his cock in her, just to let him inside. “No,” she insisted, “never.… you’re worse than ever, you can’t be trusted, you’re disgusting, totally disgusting, I warned you … I even gave you a second chance … but there’s no help for you now … you deserve to be punished.” Now she stretched herself so far forward that he knew that if she chose to, she could easily reach his penis with her tongue. However, she lay quiveringly still, permitting him to explore deeply, with his mouth, the succulent bounty between her legs. She concentrated on his frantic lapping of her rapidly engorging clitoris. His penis was so sternly distended in its peak of excitement that she almost took pity on herself and on him, almost let herself touch it with her tongue, but she firmly prevented herself from yielding to that weakness. Soon she saw signs that he was beside himself with excitement, for although he couldn’t touch his penis, or close his thighs over it, he was still free to use his pelvic muscles to clench and unclench his rear in a grinding up-and-down motion that was about to carry him over the top of endurance. Only then did she abandon herself to the tugging and pulling of his tongue on that heavy, hot, yearning point of her body, only then did she allow herself to give in to the waves of lust that led her so quickly into her long, drawn-out peak of release that was made all the more delicious by the sight of his sperm bursting forth into the air, but not in her, no, never in her, for that was not allowed, not while she was the boss, not while she was on top, not while she was in power.

  The next day, when she met Natalie Eustace for lunch, Susan Arvey listened attentively to the detailed discussion of the best in Off-Broadway plays. Natalie loved these lunches, during which she could feel so superior to her old friend, whose life, though privileged, didn’t include this artistic dimension.

  “How are you spending your evenings here, Susan?” Natalie finally asked after she’d described her own doings at length.

  “The usual, dinners with business friends of Curt’s, people you’d have no use for. I do envy you, Natalie, going everywhere, but there are some things I just don’t have the time for, alas.”

  “Perhaps when you’re in town to buy antiques with Mark Hampton, you’ll have time to devote an evening to me. But let’s leave Curt at home—as usual, hmm?”

  “We’ll count on it, Natalie, even though antique-shopping usually leaves me wilted on the vine.”

  “I must say you don’t look wilted,” Natalie said with a note of envy at Susan’s glowing health.

  “It’s the California life, cookie, I’ve always said it may be dull, but something about it is unquestionably good for you—some secret ingredient in the smog.” The red wig tonight, she thought, the one that is long and straight, and two boys … yes, she’d phone as soon as lunch was over and reserve the two newest, youngest boys the agency had, and force one of them to watch, naked, bound and unable to move, while she taught the other to obey. Yes, with his eyes covered with one thin layer of chiffon, so that she felt completely free, he would observe everything while he waited his turn, he would watch until he understood that her orders were never idle threats. If he had learned his lesson properly, perhaps she would touch him with her tongue, even with her lips … or perhaps not. There would be so many other games to play with two boys instead of one, just as there were so many possibilities in a world where the only dogma worth observing was that which was self-imposed.

  7

  Yes, Jean-Luc, you wanted to see me?” Josie Speilberg, busy in her office one morning in the early summer of 1980, wondered why the chef had requested a private int
erview with her.

  “I must give my notice, Mademoiselle, with regret,” the portly man said calmly.

  “Oh no, Jean-Luc, you can’t do that!”

  “But indeed I can, Mademoiselle. There is nothing wrong with this position, you have been most kind and I have no complaints, but I must be realistic. Next year Gigi will be away in college. She has been my dream pupil, and frankly, I have stayed on here this long only to teach her everything I could. Madame Ikehorn has no real need of a chef.”

  “But, Jean-Luc, Mrs. Ikehorn always has a chef, she’s had a chef ever since she married Mr. Ikehorn, of course she needs you.” Josie was appalled at the prospect of finding another experienced chef, just when things had been going so smoothly in the kitchen that she had been able to forget all about it.

  “Permit me to disagree. When Madame is here, she eats so carefully that the quality of my cuisine must, of necessity, be diluted into, shall we say, a thin broth? Nourishing but needing no special skills. If Madame ever entertains again, she can always employ a fine caterer. She doesn’t need to keep a chef who has practically nothing to do. Soon I will forget the uses of butter and the taste of heavy cream.”

  “If it’s a question of salary … if you’re going to cook for someone else …”

  “No, Mademoiselle, it is not that. It happens that I have a chance to realize an opportunity I have long hoped for. A friend requires a chef for a small restaurant he is about to open in Santa Barbara. The cuisine will be distinguished, the restaurant elegant, and he has offered me a partnership. I think you will agree that I would be foolish not to seize this chance.”